I remember lots of these early search websites and web directories. I even remember SEO developments like metatags, keywords and link-back strategies. What do you remember? Any SEO tips you care to share?

With Girl Scout cookie season around the corner, Wired pies it up with cookies showing percentage of sales. It’s all about the Caramel deLites. [Thanks, Elise] via Girl Scout cookie pie chart.

- via Flowing Data.

Infographic by the PPC Blog.com

GO-Globe.com created an infographic showing what happens online in 60 seconds.

via Design You Trust

Click to Enlarge

Today, I stumbled upon a really cool social network graphing tool from the creative folks over at LinkedIn (part of the LinkedIn labs projects).

Basically, once you connect your account with this LinkedIn web application, you’ll see a visual rendering of your LinkedIn network, neatly organized by colorful groups of your network connections you’ve created over time.

So, for example, my connections relating to my 10 years in New York and my Social Media Club group in Rochester, NY are grouped together. Not only are physical connections like these obvious, but also virtual connections, such as “social media” connections. My largest network is comprised of my Technology industry connections; no surprise there as technology permeates my entire career.

Click to Enlarge

To get started go here: http://inmaps.linkedinlabs.com/network and allow LinkedIn labs to connect with your profile.

When complete, you can view the social graph rendered and then “label”your networks.

TIP: Use the magnifier tool in to zoom in and read the names in each color area. Then begin labeling accordingly.

I find this sort of visual rendering to be very appealing, not only because I am a visual learner, but because it allows one to see how their career connections are related. You can also easily spot key influencials and people who are very connected to the same circles of friends and industry connections you have. Some of those folks are the same ones who helped me make connections… very interesting data!!

What do you think of this? Do you find this useful and intriguing like I do? Does this kind of tool make it easier or harder to group your network of friends and professional connections?

Here’s a visual step-by-step of the screens you’ll see as  you generate your very own LinkedIn network social graph:

[slideshow]

via pewinternet.org

Posted via email from Susan Beebe’s posterous

Research by Scores.org

Great infographic!

So what is this thing?

“Death and Taxes” is a large representational graph and poster of the federal budget. It contains over 500 programs and departments and almost every program that receives over 200 million dollars annually. The data is straight from the president’s 2011 budget request and will be debated, amended, and approved by Congress to begin the fiscal year. All of the item circles are proportional in size to their funding levels for visual comparison and the percentage change from both 2010 and 2001 is included so you can spot trends.

Ok, so what is it REALLY?

“Death and Taxes” is more than just numbers. It is a uniquely revealing look at our national priorities, that fluctuate yearly, according to the wishes of the President, the power of Congress, and the will of the people. Thousands of pages of raw data have been boiled down to one poster that provides the most open and accessible record of our nations’ spending you will ever find. If you pay taxes, then you have paid for a small part of everything in the poster. “Death and Taxes” is an essential poster for any responsible citizen or information junkie.

Source: http://www.deathandtaxesposter.com/. Follow the author / artist @mibi on twitter. His full portfolio is here http://www.wallstats.com/.

Facebook blows away the competition when it comes to this single engagement statistic.

Visitors to Facebook’s nearest rival, Hi5, only view an average of 351.2 pages per month. MySpace comes in at 261.8 monthly page views per visitor.

Point is: Not only does Facebook have a huge user-base — about 350 million people check the site at least once a month — it has a very engaged user-base. No wonder Facebook ads are finally gaining traction.

Click to enlarge / view dynamic source

Source: http://www.axiis.org/examples/BrowserMarketShare.html

Facebook has been steadily climbing towards 100 million monthly active users (MAU) in the United States, and it finally reached the milestone late this past month, according to the self-reported data in its advertising tool.

Here’s a closer look at how those numbers break down by age and gender. Be sure to check out the caveats for these numbers at the end of the article — the short of it is that you should take all of these numbers as estimates.

Overall, growth appears to have continued at around the same rate as before: Nearly 5 million users joined the site in December, pushing the total from 98.1 million MAU to nearly 103 million MAU. The previous two months saw increases of around 4 million apiece.

Women, especially younger women, continue to comprise the single largest demographic groups within the US. In total, women constitute over 56% of the overall Facebook population — a continuation of a long-time trend.

Younger users saw the biggest numerical increases in December and the 26-34 range saw the largest overall increase, adding 839,000 new MAU, most of whom were female. Earlier last year, we were seeing stronger relative growth in older demographics. Maybe Facebook is facing challenges retaining older users?

In terms of growth rates, younger people and older men saw the fastest growth, as you can see below, with women over 55 not joining the site as fast as they had been earlier last year. In December, men over 55 on Facebook grew over twice as fast as women over 55.

As we enter 2010, only 40% of Facebook users are under the age of 25 – 60% are 26 or older, and nearly 20% are 45 are older. While it started as a site for students in a few colleges, American use of Facebook today is very intergenerational.

Note that the total number of users in a given age group is higher than the combined number of males and females within it, and for a couple reasons. One is that not every user designates their gender on Facebook, either by choice or because they forgot to. Another reason is that overall demographic numbers are estimates.

And now for the caveats, as there are significant irregularities in this data. Facebook’s advertising tool typically reports traffic numbers around a month later than what the company sees internally, judging from what we have observed in the past. And, repeated sampling of any demographic within a single day will typically show a few variations for the numbers. For example, when we took a sample from the advertising tool on January 1 to compare against our sample in early December, we saw the following results for the total number of MAU in the US: nearly 103 million but also 99 and nearly 104 million. Problematically, these estimates appear to differ whenever one sorts the advertising tool for a specific demographic, meaning we don’t have a good window into whether or not each demographic is high or low. The best we can do, given the irregularities in the data, is to look at overall trends. So, don’t assume any of these numbers are facts, but rather loose estimates that are better than nothing.

via insidefacebook.com

via December Data on Facebook’s US Growth by Age and Gender: Beyond 100 Million – Susan Beebe’s posterous.